Colleges checking applications for liars
posted at 6:30 pm on April 7, 2007 by see-dubya
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Can it be? Good news out of academia? (subscription required) I think so:
There’s a new age of vigilance in academia. Spooked by incidents including guidance-counselor fraud in Los Angeles, blatant plagiarism at MIT and campus crime in North Carolina, colleges and graduate schools are shoring up their admissions process. In an era when applicants seek an edge with $500-an-hour “admissions consultants” and online essay-editing services, schools are using their own new methods to vet prospective students. Much like corporations that have been burned by CEO résumé scandals, universities are tapping into the burgeoning background-check industry to verify what’s written — or not — on applications.
The University of California system, which enrolls more than 30,000 college freshmen each year, now conducts random spot checks, asking about 10% of applicants to verify activities, grades or facts from personal essays. Last year, five Division I athletic programs began using a law firm to conduct background checks on high-school recruits. And this school year, Harvard’s undergraduate admissions staff added a former professional background checker.
Character and honesty aren’t partisan issues, though I might be inclined to point a few fingers leftward at colleges’ drift away from teaching character and the good life toward relativism. Even if that is the case, these schools that now demand accountability for the things you write aren’t any more conservative than they were a few years ago. Although on the third hand, the trend seems to be led by business schools, who understand the market needs future CEOs to be people it can trust.
Whatever the reason, this is long overdue. Plagiarism and puffery are rampant among college students today, and I believe it’s worse than ever before because the internet has propelled students’ capacity to cheat far ahead of colleges’ ability or willingness to detect them. For modern students, time is money…and the cheaters prosper by spending less time in their books and more time building up their resumes, sleeping, and dating all the cute guys and girls. Not only do they prosper unjustly, they tempt the solid students to join them.
Homing in on the application details is a good start. If someone lies on their application, there’s no reason to think they’ll get any better once they start taking classes. It also impresses students right off the bat that dishonesty won’t be tolerated. I don’t know what caused this backlash against plagiarism, but I hope it signals a new commitment to teach our future leaders what “integrity” means and why it’s important.
Oh, fine, one quick bit of political sniping, on the pressures exerted by affirmative action:
The most troubling cases, she says, involve students who feel they’re at a disadvantage because they’re not lying. Last year, a white client [of an independent guidance counselor] in Miami was distraught because her friends were falsely identifying themselves as Hispanic. “She asked me, with a straight face, ‘Why can’t I do that?’ ” says Ms. Norman, a former admissions officer at Barnard College.
Exit question: doesn’t Yale wish it had this set up to check out Sexy Lexy Vayner?
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Very interesting and long overdue. Good catch.
Bradky on April 7, 2007 at 6:49 PM
Sniff, the best part of college!
But will they check the backgrounds of those who are illegal aliens?Nevermind….
ScottG on April 7, 2007 at 7:33 PM
for any of you that have kids going into college, one of the most obvious ways schools (colleges and law schools, going up to future employers) cross check is through myspace and/or facebook. If your kids have pictures there, I’d advise them not to put anything up that they can’t show you, as those things could very well swing the tide of a college application or an internship.
Defector01 on April 7, 2007 at 7:58 PM
Not only is this important for students applying for college, but it is the same for anyone applying for a Job. As some one who controls my company’s web access, I can tell you our HR department visits all of the common social websites in search of the people who have applied for positions. Not only does it matter what you have up on your website, if you link to a friend’s blog and they mention you doing something… less than professional… it’s still an issue.
jematlock on April 7, 2007 at 9:57 PM
Sure you laugh at Alexy now, but when’s the last time you came up with an advertising slogan for giant corporation?
dorkafork on April 7, 2007 at 10:45 PM
I wish they would spend as much time vetting out nutty professors as they do vetting out unqualified students.
Lawrence on April 7, 2007 at 10:47 PM
Totally about time. When I filled out my application to the University of California (back in the day when you actually had to write it on paper and mail it in) I was really careful to represent myself accurately. I found out later that they didn’t check anything you said and I could have lied through my teeth. But there is so much cheating in high schools–especially amongst the honor students who are very competitive about their class ranking–I am sure they lie on their college apps too.
Bob's Kid on April 7, 2007 at 11:40 PM
You’re dreaming, See-Dubya. They’re just worried about litigation, and covering their asses.
Janos Hunyadi on April 8, 2007 at 1:18 AM
But what would Ward Churchil do…………?
PinkyBigglesworth on April 8, 2007 at 1:20 AM
Excerpt from topic set up above, excerpted from online article:
My wife and her fellow students are all authentic Asians-Orientals. Many emigrated here, legally, with their families at a very young age, such as around six to eight years of age, while others are first or second generation. She, and her peers, attended the top girls high school in a major city in the USA. When it was time to apply for Federal grants for minority students, she and her peers, Indians, Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Korean, and so on, were informed that they are not minorities in regard to that student loan.
In the University of Michigan court case regarding affirmative action, it was discovered that there was a point system in which students earned points toward consideration for admission. If one earned a perfect score in their SAT tests, they earned 12 points out of 100 toward admission. If one were black, Hispanic, or “Native American” they earned 25 points toward admission. To my knowledge, if they were Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Indian, Pakistani, Spanish, Italian, Jordanian, Lebanese, Caucasian, and so forth, they earned no special extra points toward admission.
It is clear that skin color and racial identity counted more toward admissions than achievement, talent, and drive.
Nevertheless, Asian-Oriental students outperform their black, Hispanic, “Native American,” and Caucasian peers in scholastic achievement, mathematics, language (English), science, and so on, and Asian-Oriental students outperform their peers in college entrance to graduation rates.
It is clear that blacks and Hispanics get special attention because they have more political and economic power than other groups, and that Asians-Orientals, and Caucasians have been on the receiving end of racial discrimination and bigotry in the Affirmative Action, and “Preferred Racial Group” aberration. It is the politically correct thing to do, it is dishonest, and it is based on manipulation and dishonesty, not on true need, true equality, or true justice.
It is long overdue to dismantle the diabolical entanglement and catastrophe that is Affirmative Action.
William
William2006 on April 8, 2007 at 2:45 AM
When are they going to start checking the leftist academecians for all their political lies?
georgej on April 8, 2007 at 4:13 AM
why can’t she say’s hispanic? or black? maybe the first intellictual dishonesty they need to get rid of is racial designations. How are they going to disprove someones race? You don’t look black, you can “pass” so therefore we’re reclassifying you as white, so the real “black” can get the benefits they need.
hotdax on April 8, 2007 at 9:30 AM
My cousin’s husband is from South Africa. They live in LA. His family, like most South African Jews, emmigrated from Europe, but he’s indeed an African native. I wonder what would happen if their kids called themselves African Americans on an application form.
What do you think would appeal more to a PC admissions officer, being a yeshiva graduate, or saying that you attended a “bi-cultural immersion school, studying ancient esoteric Middle Eastern texts in their original languages”?
As Jews, my kids could claim that they are African. It’s now Passover, when we celebrate the Exodus from Egypt. Egypt is in Africa so Jews are descended from “Africans”. Also, geographically, the Jordan valley is part of the African Rift, and Israel is on the African side of the rift, so Jews are African that way too.
However, since Israel is considered part of Asia Minor, we could say that we’re Asians as well.
The whole concept of race is stupid.
rokemronnie on April 8, 2007 at 5:33 PM
Yes! It’s about time higher ed. started taking a skeptical look at the bull—- students put on their admissions paperwork. Back in the day I played it straight and assumed we all did, figuring the limited opportunities to lie would keep everyone else honest as well; after all, how is someone going to fake their transcript if the college gets it directly from the school? And how does someone figure they’ll succeed if they recycle an essay the admissions office has already seen three or four times?
As to the countermeasures: I’m in favor of essay-checking/de-deuplication tools, in favor of common sense and a nose for smelling bull—-, but against “background checks.” BACKGROUND CHECKS??? For a 17-year-old? What the heck does that even mean?
And as to this, different issue, which has nothing to do with academic honesty whatsoever:
Yep. It’s your right to defy and defile unjust regulations. Though I won’t let my children put the wrong Race Codes on their apps, I won’t begrudge anyone else the same latitude. Though I’d be much more in favor of it if large #s did it in protest than one or two sneaked by to try & take advantage of the situation (and therein lies the problem…hmmm).
I’m just waiting for the day when a Quebecer sues for unfair discrimination because [s]he was denied admission to a U.S. university over a lily-white, blond, 100% Caucasian Hispanic based on affirmative action, demanding an equal degree of favoritism because [s]he is “Francophone”:
“But, you’re not … … … brown!”
“Neezer iz my colleague…”
RD on April 8, 2007 at 5:51 PM
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